Asteroid City's Cinematographer Shares How They Created the Film's Out-of-This-World Look. Set in a one-café town in the American southwest in the 1950s, Wes Anderson's Asteroid City is a sci-fi extravaganza.
Asteroid City (or "Asteroid City") is a 2023 American comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson, from a story he wrote with Roman Coppola.
The entire film seems intentionally crafted to create a sense of emotional distance, for a few reasons—not least of which is that the film's opening explains that Asteroid City isn't a real place, and the story that takes place in Anderson's pastel diorama is actually a play being staged for a studio audience on a ...
Per The Numbers, "Asteroid City" pulled in just shy of $43,000 over Labor Day weekend domestically, which was just enough to put it over the top. It now sits at $28.1 million domestically to go with $22.4 million internationally for a grand total of $50.5 million.
The set for Wes Anderson's latest film Asteroid City was designed and built as a functioning town complete with underground power and sewers, production designer Adam Stockhausen tells Dezeen in this interview.
We shot the TV studio in black-and-white film and brought in a theatrical lighting designer from London to give it a unique style. We had overhead grids with harder lights, things I ordinarily wouldn't do on a movie set.
'Asteroid City' is a film packed to the rafters with nothing of note. The narrative is overloaded with unnecessary stylizations that distract rather than engage. Moreover, the switching back and forth between the play and the show about it is jarring throughout, while the overarching structure is alienating.
Sex, Romance & Nudity. Full-frontal nudity of a fragmented female body (head out of frame). Through a window, a teen watches her mother have sex, which is depicted by showing the moment before activity occurs, with a close-up of the mom's bare feet on the bed next to a man standing above her. Kissing.
In addition to the violent scenes and scary visual images mentioned above, Asteroid City has some scenes that could scare or disturb children aged 5-8 years. For example: Augie and his children are seated in a diner when a bomb goes off, causing the diner to shake.
Nominated for Nothing: The Academy didn't wake up to Asteroid City because it couldn't fall asleep. Wes Anderson's latest feature deserved more consideration from the Oscars.
With Wes Anderson's latest installment, however, the story bounces around so much, between reality, behind the scenes, and within the play, which is Asteroid City, the story can get jumbled and the meaning behind it can be hard to find. But that's just the point.
Asteroid City encompasses an environmental grief that manifests as a failure to accept an uncontrollable reality. Three elements in the film highlight this best: a burnt hand, lucid dreaming and fumbled lines.
If grown adults got bored watching Asteroid City, chances are your kids will too. That's why I rated it 14+. There is also full-frontal female nudity but it's a blink-&-you-miss-it moment. They smoke a lot too.
Films classified as X 18+ are legally restricted to adults 18 years and over. They contain sexually explicit activity including actual sexual intercourse or other sexual activity between consenting adults.
The implication is that the Augie will continue his relationship with Midge, and be able to move on from his wife's death. After one last look at the city—which really is an impressive set—the Steenbeck family climbs into their car and drives away. With that, the credits role, and the movie ends.
Following a writer on his world famous fictional play about a grieving father who travels with his tech-obsessed family to small rural Asteroid City to compete in a junior stargazing event, ... Read all.
What are the black and white scenes in Asteroid City?
These scenes, shot in black-and-white and Academy ratio, are a performance, too — they're presented as dramatizations for the television program that's broadcasting the live production of Asteroid City.
In ASTEROID CITY, Anderson creates a feel of the 1950s that is more convincing than accurate. This isn't up to his best films, but Anderson fans won't want to miss it. For someone as memed as Wes Anderson, you'd think he'd stop surprising us. An exercise of self-indulgence and soulless nonsense.
We as humans love to control things, of course. We love to know where things are, how they work, what they mean, and Anderson's films are an externalization of one man's feelings on that essential truth. With Asteroid City, he reinforces that truth, while also letting us know that it's OK to let go once in a while.
Longtime Anderson collaborator Adam Stockhausen (production designing Oscar winner for The Grand Budapest Hotel) created the buildings and interiors including the luncheonette, garage and motel. The mountains, boulders, and rocks were all constructed, too, to such a scale that barely any green screen was used.
Wes suggested the Spanish town of Chinchón, which was super close to Madrid. It was the perfect balance of a great hotel, proximity to a film crew, and this very flat, beautiful field to build the town on.
“Asteroid City,” while beautiful, was a movie that made even me go back and think about certain parts. Loosely, “Asteroid City” follows a family of four and their arrival in the titular Asteroid City for a junior science convention set in the American desert of the 1950s.
